


my own blood is much too dangerous

by siddals



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 20:04:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siddals/pseuds/siddals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If it hadn't been for their dubious bond as sisters, Donna doubts she'd have ever spoken to Audrey after they left for college.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my own blood is much too dangerous

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Donna doesn't particularly want to come back for the funeral but she does anyway. Ben Horne's attempts to make amends with the Hayward family (and her specifically) have always fell hollow at best but it feels like something of an obligation at this point - Ben funded Donna's college education in part (the Haywards have never been exactly poor but putting three daughters through school would prove a bit much for almost anyone except Ben Horne) and even now, much as she tries to deny it, Donna thinks her mother could use the support. She half-considers not going, staying out in Seattle (her father - her real father- is staying home, she knows that) but obligation calls and Donna has never been very good at putting her foot down about this sort of thing.  
  
She didn't plan to leave Twin Peaks, exactly, though she hadn't really planned to stay either. She had no particular loyalty to the town but still, there was her family, James, a familiar landscape of surroundings that she had been brought up in and that had bred itself in her. Still, she'd left for school and then attended law school and the better offers seemed to be further and further away. It's not that she's ever had a particular taste for adventure. She doesn't and even if she did, she expects the events surrounding Laura's death would have stamped it out fast. All the same, it's felt easier to leave, to escape Laura and Maddy and the Hornes, the way the town seemed to curl in and choke harder no matter what she did.  
  
She doesn't bring back Gina, doesn't think that's the sort of thing she'd like to share with the population of Twin Peaks. Her parents do know, and though they've taken some time to get used to it, they've been reasonable enough (she isn't sure if they've connected her seeing women after college to Laura, but if they have, they've been tactful enough not to mention it). The landscape of a whole town is another matter. She thinks she'd like to avoid as much conflict as possible.  
  
Nearly the entire town is there, turned out in black, and Donna is sure less than half of them would have a good word to say for Ben. There are people she doesn't know too, middle aged men in suits she expects are business associates. With the exception of subtracting Ben Horne, adding some stray outsiders and adding ten years to their collective ages, it could be Laura's funeral all over again. (Laura, Laura,  _Laura_ , is she why Donna left, underneath the excuses of practicality and easiness?) Audrey Horne holds court near her father's graveside, perhaps a little too vibrant for the circumstances. Donna sees more than one man come away from speaking with Audrey with looking distinctly disturbed and she thinks it's better not to ask.  
  
If it hadn't been for their dubious bond as sisters, Donna doubts she'd have ever spoken to Audrey after they left for college. They'd never exactly been friends, even when they were younger, and Audrey had seemed as intent as anyone could be on leaving the town behind entirely. She'd gone to college on the east coast and joined the FBI shortly after university - if Donna left Twin Peaks almost by accident, Audrey has seemed intent on shaking it from her. They speak on the phone sometimes, infrequently, but she's only seen Audrey a handful of times since high school, always on school breaks. She remembers Audrey, in the Double R, with a boy she must have brought back from college, her head tipped laughing a little too dramatically. Always the show. Always the spectacle.  
  
Audrey looks hardly disturbed by her father's death, though Donna has known her long enough to know her moods are hard, even impossible to gauge. Agent Cooper is with her, in a black suit, his hair slightly gray at the temples now. His presence seems strange at first (Audrey mentioned him during their last call but said only that she worked with him, nothing more) but he's at Audrey's side through the whole thing, puts a hand on her arm as though to steady her as the coffin is lowered and Donna thinks she understands better why he's here.  
  
It could almost be Laura's funeral, she thinks, by the company.  
  
Sylvia Horne is chilly when Donna greets her, which is only to be expected. Her own mother comes but neither of her sisters do, nor her father, and Donna for a second feels disloyal, as though her presence here is a betrayal to her own family, her real family. Audrey kisses her on the cheek when they greet each other.  
  
"I'm sorry for your loss," Donna says, and realizes after she's spoken how inappropriate it must seem, what an insult.  
  
"It's your loss too," Audrey says, in that same, purring, girlish voice she's always had.  
  
"Of course," she says, "I'm sorry."  
  
"Oh, no, I don't mind at all." Audrey laughs. "You've certainly got no obligation to stick in our mess."  
  
Donna smiles and moves away to speak to someone else.  
  
She wonders if she should have brought Gina. She could bring a boyfriend easily, the same way Audrey brought Cooper but she'd been afraid to bring Gina and she would if it would have been worth it to risk it anyway. There would be someone for her, someone untied to all of this, who would feel nothing but disconnected sympathy. That would be nice.

Would it have been? Donna imagines Gina in Twin Peaks, swept into all of this. She imagines Laura surveying her. That giggle. _I wouldn't have thought she was your type._  Laura wouldn't hold for anyone matching her in importance.

She's coming out of the bathroom when she sees Audrey. She's a little flushed, not drunk but enough to be noticeable, her laugh a little louder. Donna's stayed sober for the reception, someone has to take her mother home after all, and she's spent too many years as the designated driver to drink away her feelings now.

"Donna!" says Audrey.

Donna feels impossibly cornered.

"Hi," she says, with a thin smile.

"I wanted to thank you for coming out here. It means a lot."

Donna can't tell if it's real or just words, what she must have said to fifty businessmen and the whole of their high school class. She wouldn't hold it against her, of course. She only wonders.

"I felt I should," Donna says truthfully, wondering if it won't be enough, if it will sound like an excuse.

"You didn't really have to," Audrey says, "but it was good of you."

Audrey looks more beautiful than ever, she thinks, more even than she did in high school. Back then, she'd seemed like a kind of unsteady, dangerous thing, a spreading fire (Laura was that way too, but for different reasons). She seems more steady now, not calm (never calm) but more balanced.

She's just a little drunk now, not enough that Donna would worry but enough to make her smile wider.

"So, Cooper, huh?" Donna says, in lieu of anything else to say.

Audrey presses a finger to the side of her nose.

"Don't tell anyone."

Donna laughs.

"I think they've all figured out. At least everyone here."

"Have they?" Audrey says blithely, "I must not be half the agent I thought I was."

"Guess not," Donna says, and Audrey throws back her head and laughs.

"I would have liked to meet your lady friend. I guess you didn't bring her?"

"She couldn't come," Donna says, with a wave of her hand, preferring not to explain.

"Oh. I should visit Seattle, then. Sometime. Maybe I'll be sent out. Or you could come out to Virginia, of course."

"I'll think about it," she says, not sure yet if she's only exchanging a pleasantry or not. She tries to imagine Gina and herself sitting at a dinner table with Audrey and Agent Cooper and the thought is almost laughable.

There's a pause.

"I would have liked to be your sister," Audrey says, "I just never thought you wanted me."

Donna isn't sure at first what to say to that, if Audrey even means it or if it's only one of the things she says.

"It wasn't that," she says carefully, after a moment. It's not a lie either. She and Audrey may never have been as close as that but she's been the last on the list of reasons to stay away from the Hornes, if she's a reason at all.

"I know. You have your own sisters and a real father and I--I know it was about more than me. But I would have liked to be your sister." She pauses. "Did you ever dream about having different parents? You know, obscure European royalty or something like that. I did. All the time. It seems like the sort of thing that never happens."

"I did," Donna says, "not often, of course. When my mother made me clean."

Audrey laughs.

"No, you--you're all right. You're lucky. They say this sort of thing is in the blood but it isn't really. It just surrounds you everywhere. You don't have other people."

She doesn't know what to say to that.

"You have other people, I'm sure," she offers.

"No, I do. I do now. I'm well, as these things go. It's nice to have somewhere else to go, that's all. I'm sure it must be."

"Well, my parents are good people," Donna says.

"I know," Audrey says, "that's what I'm saying. You should visit, that's all. You don't have to. But you're welcome."

Audrey hugs her briefly as she walks away, her head resting in the crook of Donna's shoulder for an impossibly short second. Her perfume is light and clinging, following her as she goes out.

She calls Gina that night, finds her voice familiar, reassuring, an anchor to something other than here. Retreating into her childhood bedroom is uncomfortable all the same, full of shadows, darting around the bed, Laura, Ben, Leland Palmer, Maddy, Harold Smith, even Audrey, who isn't dead or even gone far away but seems like a ghost all the same. Donna considers herself a practical woman. She has done an expert job of putting it all away. It sits inside her all the same, she thinks, all of this, twists itself in her insides and takes roots. She thinks she understands what Audrey meant, even if not in the same way. She hasn't tried to run but perhaps she has anyway.

She resolves to call Audrey from Seattle.


End file.
